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There are some great social media archiving software and tools that not only do the work for you, but also offer distinct marketing advantages. Here are a few benchmarks to help you find a comprehensive social media archiving solution.

Social media is an incredibly fun and effective way to engage with millions of people online. Along with the excitement, however, is the perceived buzz kill — FINRA and SEC compliance standards.The requirement to archive and retain records of all communication via social networks seems tedious, doesn't it? (Rules 17a-3 and 17a-4 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and NASD Rule 3110).

As restraining as it sounds, there are some great archiving software and tools that not only do the work for you, but also offer distinct marketing advantages. Below are a few benchmarks to help you find a comprehensive social media archiving solution.

So, what does communication via social media entail? Here are some examples of interactive content that must be archived.

According to Arkovi, a social media archiving company, the right social media archiving solution goes beyond mere data retention. It can drive business development, discovery and make your marketing more effective in the following ways:

Offers the ability to facilitate satisfying the compliance requirements to participate in social media

Supports the use of professional and personal systems and devices at any time

Integrates online monitoring of content from sources other than your social media content. This could include RSS feeds, Twitter searches, Google alerts, and more. You should be able to export them to an Excel spreadsheet for easy analysis and team collaboration

Offers the ability to view the results of compliance-driven monitoring and marketing-driven monitoring through a single dashboard. This is much more convenient than clicking through numerous emails and computer screens

Rich source for content ideas

Helps you see what content is getting the most feedback and attention.

What archiving platform should I use?

There are a medley of awesome social media archiving hubs for financial professionals. Here is a list of the top 6 to help you begin your search.

1. Hootsuite's brand new Enterprise solution provides the most comprehensive social media pre-approval and archiving solution in the industry. With HootSuite Social Compliance, clients can use HootSuite Enterprise for social media engagement, collaboration, analytics, security and training while also managing the review and supervision of social media communications from their Global Relay Archive. Pre-review tools finally bring compliance officers into the approval queue, mitigating the barriers to social media messaging for financial firms.

2. Built in the cloud, Arkovi monitors and archives incoming and outgoing social media communications, including blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, websites and more. They deliver this across all devices — PC, Mac, and smart phones.

4. Socialware: This platform is a comprehensive social business management solution that empowers financial services professionals to engage, acquire and retain a higher volume of customers. Their three major products are Socialware Voices, Socialware Compass and Socialware Insights.

6. Hearsay Social enables enterprises to engage with their customers via social media at every level of the organization — from brand to region to local stores, agents, or employees. Fortune 500 companies like Farmers Insurance Group use Hearsay Social to manage multiple corporate brand pages as well as more than 5,000 local agent pages. Hearsay Social delivers enterprise-class scale, reliability and regulatory compliance for financial services, insurance, retail and other distributed organizations on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

Selecting the best archiving platform will require a little research on your part, and they all offer some wonderful tools that offer great social media archiving solutions for your firm. If you have any questions regarding this subject, leave a comment!

About the Author

Entrepreneur, author, speaker, and worldwide connector, Amy McIlwain is recognized internationally for radical new ways of thinking about Social Media, PR, marketing, advertising, and customer service.
A former NCAA Division I Soccer player, Amy started building and designing Websites back in th... More